by Nathan Donohue Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)

Aug 10, 2012

This week marks the 67th anniversary of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On August 6, 1945, U.S. President Harry Truman informed the worldthat an atomic weapon had been detonated on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Nicknamed Little Boy, the bomb with a power of over 20,000 tons of TNT destroyed most of Hiroshima, killing an estimated 130,000 people. Three days later on August 9, a second bomb nicknamed Fat Man was dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki destroying most of Nagasaki and killing roughly between 60,000 – 70,000 people. Six days after the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan surrendered, marking the end of World War II. The destructive power of these nuclear weapons and the subsequent casualties of the Japanese have continued to prompt questions over whether the U.S. should have decided to use these weapons against Japan during World War II. Even 67 years after the event, the decision to drop the first atomic bomb continues to be widely debated.